Professor Mason White’s “The Productive Surface” essay has been published in the journal Places.

Nancy Levinson, Places editor, writes:

One of the enduring polarities in architecture is the tension between a focus on form and a focus on function. Here architect Mason White illuminates a range of contemporary practices that move beyond the old binary approaches to emphasize the productive potential of built surfaces — as White explains, "the capacity for a designed surface to generate a usable component — agriculture, renewable energy systems, water harvesting systems, et al." What is more, White argues, these new surfaces are producing not only usable things but also "a new public realm, and with that a new public, characterized not by whether it is urban, suburban or rural, but by whether it participates in the cultivation of its necessities, of its energy and food."

http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=14998